


mausoleum for a library

by medeadea



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Curses, M/M, Multi, Mythical Beings & Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 15:07:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6244618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/medeadea/pseuds/medeadea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>one provocation too many is what leaves Kuroo with a weight on his shoulders that he cannot seem to lift until he finds the way to something else entirely</p>
            </blockquote>





	mausoleum for a library

**Author's Note:**

  * For [puppykihyun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/puppykihyun/gifts).



> (or: me ignoring full stops and trying my hand at a notion that is hundreds of years old and decidedly not what you had in mind, dear Kai)  
> (eternal thanks go to Marge, my last minute cheerleader and unerring support)

There is a weight on Kuroo’s shoulders, suffocating and maybe a little comforting, like a blanket tucked by a mother and soaked through with alcohol, ready to lull him into a sleep that’s eternal and easing and even somewhat welcome.

He doesn’t know where it came from or how he can dismantle it, but he knows he must, for the sake of his life and his father’s happiness—sympathy that can plummet like a body from an open oriel window or snap like a bowstring that has been pulled too taut. Kuroo knows this from experience, hard earned comprehension that he would have preferred to live without, but alas, he won’t.

So he does what he always does in times of uncertainty, he asks the oracle.

The oracle that doesn’t foretell at all, never has and never will. It’s his best friend and companion at all times joyous and forsaken, conflicted and peaceful. Sometimes Kenma seems unreal to him, too dulled in most hours, gleaming like a beacon in others, with his smirk that’s so sage even though it shouldn’t be, and his eyes that pierce one’s innermost core like the arrow the apple or the needle the butterfly, and that’s exactly how he looks at Kuroo, a pierced insect that’s—maybe not beautiful, not a mourning cloak—but compelling enough to warrant a look.

Yet, right now, there’s nothing Kenma can do except sigh and shrug, unable and unwilling to penetrate the walls around Kuroo’s mind to examine what’s weighing on his metaphorical shoulders; it makes them curve like flying buttresses and leaves him feeling stifled—no, empty. He tries to convince Kenma that it’s something he’s supposed to shake off, the way his wolf would shake off millions of droplets of water after a bath in the light of the full moon, but the oracle wavers with eyes flitting here and there, brows pulled down and Kuroo surrenders.

“I’m sorry, Kuro. I don’t want to hurt you.”  


* * *

   
A week in is when Kuroo sees _him_.

The boy that is everything he’s ever desired, ever dreamed about, and it torments him that that’s all he does, catches a glimpse of perfection incarnate, of eyes that shine with passion, amber domes built from desire and held up with unbridled rage, cheeks flushed pink with yearning and lips sparkling like champagne that hide alabaster teeth both deadly and nurturing, hair like burning desert sand in the middle of the day and small hands clinging onto a magician’s staff as if it weren’t a weapon but a lifeline keeping him tethered to reality at the sight of Kuroo’s foolish staring.

There is electricity in the air, static that won’t discharge until the boy turns away, knocks his staff on the concrete floor of the train station and vanishes into Line Three to leave Kuroo utterly bereft and disoriented.

Gasping for air, he thinks of his childhood, of colourful flowers in his mother’s garden defying the scorching summer’s sun, snapdragons showing their teeth, forget-me-nots arming in pale lilac legions, camelias cocking the bows of their already scarlet petals in confliction to the lances of heat raining down on them from the metallic sky. He is left in the middle of a battlefield, held down by the weight on him and feels like screaming. It isn’t fair.

 

* * *

  
The erinys can’t help him, Kuroo learns quickly as Akaashi only takes one look at him and grins. That it _is_ the burden of vengeance on his shoulders Kuroo knows, he’s certain that he insulted someone he shouldn’t have, just because he looked harmless and thoroughly human enough.

It was a mistake, probably the gravest he ever made in his history of errors. He knows that because whole mountains of tomes filled with blunders are stacked in his mind—dusty encyclopedias hidden beneath well-thumbed and repeated booklets with things he should have done differently, things he should have done, and things he shouldn’t have done at all.

Sometimes, when he feels especially maudlin, Kuroo takes them all out, revisits them and sorts them in imaginary shelves that soon again collapse from the sheer weight of remorse scratching at his insides. They hollow him out, these books, like the bleeding underbelly of a city being criss-crossed by thousands of kilometers of catacombs filled with bodies and foolish curiosity-seekers that will soon be bodies just as well. The oracle hates when he does this, calls him a coward and a white elephant, but that only fills another page in one of the oft revisited lexica of regret he hoards like the dragon hoards his treasure.

With the erinys there comes the hellion, or better with Ennoshita there comes Akaashi, because they are around each other even if they shouldn’t be, even if Kuroo and Ennoshita are in class and Akaashi should be working, exacting revenge on those who deserve it, not listening to a professor drone about the importance of death in baroque poetry while his head, adorned by a crown of inky black curls, rests on the shoulder of a demon who—really—probably shouldn’t be here in the first place, matriculated or not, but residing on one of the thrones in that other world that Kuroo couldn’t dream of entering, what with his decidedly temporal and lupine heritage. Not that he’d want to.

Yet, their unashamed intimacy makes Kuroo think of _him_ , the boy he can’t stop wanting, can’t stop obsessing over like the large black plush dog he had gotten for his birth that had taken hold of his childish heart over the years and never let go, not even after he had one day accidentally thrown it into the fire and was forced to watch it catch alight and crumble to ash while his father droned on about caution and responsibility. (It is one of the longest mourning chapters in the records of his mind.)

This time he knows he would keep any fire away, be careful and responsible enough to hold the boy safe and near his heart. Still, he wonders, how someone he’d only seen for a few scant seconds was able to take hold of his entire being like the toy he’d owned for over a decade had.

When Ennoshita inquires about the hunch of his shoulders and he explains, demonic hands curl into fists in front of a shaking belly and Kuroo makes a face like he’d bitten into a piece of curd soap. Ennoshita sighs and curls a claw over Kuroo’s brittle palm.

“It’s not hell, I promise.”

 

* * *

  
New moon makes Kuroo sluggish and sullen, he keeps the taste of gunpowder in his mouth and trudges through the world’s days with aching feet and dull thudding in his ears.

At night he dreams, of deserts, mountains of grains of sand wandering, searching, swirling in the scorching wind with the grace of a coryphée and settling down again into the body of the dune. He finds enormous vaults hewn from blinding white marble, empty and sunken, half buried by sand and so abraded that only the bare bones are left.

Yet when he wakes, the sweat on his skin is icy and his heart throbs with loneliness, ignores the closeness of his roommates, that couple swirling around him always in a tango of stomping bird feet and howling laughter that sounds like mischief incarnate.

Tendou bursts into Kuroo’s room, mouth full of adventurous fables from his wolf twin that circle around Kuroo’s head, as if Kuroo would care about brothers, wolf or not, and anyway, he scowls, they aren’t even the _same_ kind of wolf, Kuroo is the least like him he could ever be right now, when the moon hides behind the shadow of the earth, leaving his mind sharp, human, and his senses slow and dulled by a veil. It’s sitting in his mother’s library with the sheer curtains over the French windows that let the light from the outside pass, but nothing else. He can’t watch the swallows fly or the thunder form and he’s _bored_ , this month even worse, now that he’s weighted down, chained to gravity like Prometheus to his rock and he grinds his teeth.

The trickster’s ramble gets interrupted by the clacking of talons on the floor, a beautiful face nuzzles into the crook of his neck and he stutters to a halt, just now perceiving Kuroo’s state of unwillingness to go on, to try, while he pulls on Semi’s arms that have curled around his chest with the utmost grace.

They’re equally baffled, Tendou louder about it than Semi, who stays all elegance and head haloed by his weird, two-toned hair, brows knitting in a way that makes him look like a scholar and not a clueless almost-still- _boy_ that earns his living through his looks and his body's movements and yes—now that Kuroo mentions that—his scowl becomes truer and his talons click louder on the checkered tiles.

Tendou scuffs Kuroo’s shoulder with accuracy that tells about years of practice and force measured with the art of engineering that’s necessary to punt Kuroo out of his orbit around misery and into the space of action.

“You need to ask a pro, man. Find some witches.”

 

* * *

  
It takes the length of several dreamt deserts, marmorean vaults and the appearance of a tiny scorpion until Kuroo takes the advice, puts on his laced boots and walks out into the clinical world of professional problem solvers with its beige walls and pastel artworks that surround receptionists looking down at him with eyes that say _derelict_ , ignorant of any of the circumstances that brought him here, ignorant of his family that is frankly _ancient_ and also former nobility—but it’s not like nobility is worth anything anymore, even less so in Kuroo’s own eyes.

A woman enters, tiny in build but with a personality that could fill whole skyscrapers with its intensity. Kuroo knows the sort, intimately, maybe not with choppy bleached bangs, no, _never_ like that, but he recognizes her need to reign, to be queen over this, whatever he calls it—realm? Iatric empire? Maybe—aware of every corner collecting magical dust and every niche that hides possible, eventual secrets.

She introduces herself with a resolute shake of her tiny hand and a voice that is too loud and too decisive for someone whose profession it is to guess and Kuroo shrinks, automatic, just like he knew he would, and gives a little more to the burden that sits on his spine, sighs, lowers his eyes. In contrast, her eyes glitter with opportunity, with the will to conquer his malaise and she calls for the other one, the girl barely taller than herself but with an authority that’s no less commanding, hair shorter and black like pitch, eyes just as dark.

The commandant answers to her queen not with submission, but with her very own brand of swinging hips and hands painted to vivacious gladiolas that spin the heavy pen over leaves of paper, spread ink over it like liquid blossoms in ultramarine that dry in the span of a single heavy blink.

It makes him uncomfortable, sitting on this mushroom chair and observing their adept spiel in demonstrating strength, to him—or each other, he doesn’t discern, and it makes him antsy, this having to wait until the powerful are done with each other and deign to attend to his ever shrinking self.

Out of the murky depths of _I don’t want to be here_ and _are you done soon, I know this game already_ he finally detects them asking about his issue and with growling reluctance and the heads of his roommates swimming in front of him, Kuroo spreads the map of his dilemma, complete with compass rose and key, stretches to the edges of his awareness and swings around again, leaving as few blank areas as he is capable of.

Queen and commandant stick their heads together, form a one-headed, two-bodied entity of answer searching antennae and Kuroo is disgusted, in part at the two of them building this natural unity through the face of his misery, but mostly he is disgusted at himself, his nauseating inability to trust, to bare himself and deal with it—now that he is forced to do it over and over and over again he feels like a scratching record, or at least what he imagines that is, because old fashioned technology is not at all something that’s to be found in the halls and chambers of his upbringing.

At last they separate and the commandant takes his hand in hers and presses down as if to tell him she understands his struggles and he almost snorts.

“This isn’t something Saeko and I can help you with, but we have a colleague who specializes in local legendary figures and curses. She’ll be back in a good week.”

 

* * *

  
In the time between yesterday and tomorrow, his journey from one helper to the other, the excruciating baring of his core that he despises and needs, just about _wants_ , Kuroo tries to find his _boy_ , the person he’s missing like the limb he never knew he had, and he knows he can find him, if only he’d be rid of that cursed weight on him that makes moving torture and thinking agony, and he cries to the heavens that tell him nothing except that he has to move but can’t.

His dreams become longer and hotter and Kuroo starts feeling like a child, running around in those bony remnants of what had to have been castles belted by ramparts, gardens filled with bloom, flowers and trees and bushes and _green_ , but now there’s only sand yellow and blinding white and steel blue and it’s all so impossibly dry. He does find the scorpion again, follows it’s mazy path in the hopes of finding anything that’s not dead, dry or stinging in his eyes. When he does, Kuroo almost whoops, but then he realizes that it is but a few broken shelves, carved from wood that’s in all probability simply still here because this particular room that they’re lying in is almost underground, safe from winds and grating sand.

The third witch is different from the other two, he finds out. Tiny—yes, like they all are—but soft, eyes adorned by bashful blinking rose petals, hands fluttering hummingbirds, voice little but vowing sincerity and security and for the first time Kuroo doesn’t mind telling his story so much—maybe it’s because he woke up this morning while inspecting broken wood instead of running through blazing sand and searing winds, but maybe it’s her, this small creature that radiates benevolence and a tension that must be tenfold compared to his.

He presents her the key to the cupboard of his memories, watches her handle it with care and a sure hand that holds a bundle of questions he answers with short hitches on drawer handles, strong shoves of coathangers, until he reaches the thought fabric he needs to sew her the picture she is looking for.

She sighs when she’s done and Kuroo wants to rip something apart and stomp on it until nothing but dust remains like the dust of his marrow that is being teared apart by his life and his weight and his longing. Even this slight seamstress is unable to make him whole again and Kuroo is angry; at his fate, a fickle concept that he never really believed in, not since he was old enough to take care of himself without relying on the capricious guidance of others, to spread his wings on his own and howl at the moon alone, sleeping sated and relaxed afterwards, and angry at himself, for making that mistake in the first place that by now fills a whole shelf of glossaries explaining the meaning of _weight_ in his mind.

The seamstress unfurls his fist with her bird-boned fingers and twitters at him with her sparrow voice and Kuroo slumps, defeated.

“This is your own. You’ll have to let go of it on your own.”

 

* * *

  
The dreams become hotter and less bearable, Kuroo still stirs from them in raw sweat, but he has taken to build up the broken shelves when he’s asleep, out of sheer boredom and every night anew until he is content with their stability and wakes, wondering what they had contained once, what he’d put into them if he owned anything in this empty world besides the scorpion that never stays where he sets it, always returns to Kuroo’s shoulder instead of sitting prettily on one of the shelves.

At daytime he ponders, wanders to lectures if he feels like he can, and doesn’t do much besides. It’s not like anything changes just because the full moon is almost there, that’s only a myth, like his supposed fear of silver or the most hilarious assumption that werewolves procreate through the barbaric and utterly illogical method of biting. Yet, with his mood sitting at the bottom of a well, he can’t even laugh at the movies anymore that made this whole prejudice popular in the first place.

The weight on him doesn’t disappear, doesn’t even change, keeps its claws buried under his shoulder blades, a vulture that sucks his life out of him with every stride on his path and he just wants to _let go_ , slip out of his skin, run through the desert if he has to, set things on fire and _that is it_.

Kuroo spots _him_ , hair of desert sand, marmorean teeth, eyes burning, wood burning, shelves burning, not any shelves—no, _bookshelves_ —built by his hands and filled by his hands with encyclopedias, tomes, novels and booklets of old mistakes, regrets, sorrows all going up in flames, igniting and consuming each other in a frantic effort to disappear, turn to smoke and escape with the winds.

When he blinks, _he_ is still there, staring at Kuroo with his amber eyes that simply glow, not with rage but maybe desire, pleased pleased desire. He says something, but Kuroo can only see champagne lips move, cheeks pinken, _exactly_ how he remembers them, as if he’d seen him every day since and Kuroo realizes he _has_ , in his dreams, those images he’s been wandering through for weeks, fantasies that showed him where to stash his remorse and what to do with it.

Kuroo feels a foot collide with his shin and he rouses, hears the bell of a voice instead of howling winds, smells fresh herbs, not the overbred blooms in the gardens of his childhood that never really scent like anything, no, proper grasses, those plants that are actually valuable and save lives like his own.

“I’ve been looking for you,” the boy says and grasps his hand with gentle fingers and Kuroo finds his home, his missing limb, lets all his senses overflood with the inevitability of calm and flight and love.

Kuroo doesn’t know where he takes the trust, if it’s his favourite fickle mistress _fate_ or the equally as laughable concept of his _promised one_ or something else altogether.

What he knows is that he’s here, with _him_ , where they want to be and where they’ll stay and that is perfect.


End file.
